I didn’t have anything on my mind, and then I saw this posted by a friend:

I’m in favor of government running things where profit maximization should not be the goal – defense, infrastructure, education, and healthcare. To those who disagree, I ask:

1. Why would you want to put $600 billion into shareholders’ pockets at the expense of improving the nation’s overall health and productivity (which can only help GDP)?
2. Why don’t you want to move away from a system with 30% overhead (which doesn’t improve health in any way) to one with 3% overhead?

By reducing administrative overhead and eliminating profits for the payers from the equation, we can then pay doctors more for their services than they currently get from Medicare and Medicaid while likely reducing overall costs of healthcare for people and businesses alike.  I don’t understand (and would like to know) why someone would disagree with this model (unless of course that person was a financial beneficiary of the current one at the expense of millions of Americans’ well-being).

Generally, I tend to lean toward social liberalism and economic conservatism — basically, the government should provide services where profits should be irrelevant (like defense, infrastructure, healthcare, or education), but should do so appropriately within a balanced budget.  I also like the idea of citizens paying a reasonable overall cost (taxes + private fees) for these services and getting some actual value for them.

What does that mean in this political climate?  It means that I support what the president has said so far and am waiting for the results of his plans (frankly, it’s too soon to tell).  It means that I’m leery of Congress, who can’t seem to get over themselves and their special interests and get something done to benefit their constituents.  For instance, the stimulus package and the budget process both irritate me — at what point will they actually change from the quid pro quo style of bill-writing that causes so much of the bloat and deficits in the first place?  I know – the president spearheads some of these initiatives and signs off at the end, but the devil’s in the details where Congress does the writing.

What I don’t understand is how intense the hate has become.  The Obama administration has been in place for fewer than five months — have they had time to earn the invective already?  I didn’t like GWB when he was elected, but what he had done in his first five months wouldn’t have warranted the reaction Obama gets.  The Sotomayor nomination alone has brought racism out of the woodwork, while seemingly 0.0000001% of the discussion of her nomination has anything to do with her legal credentials or published judicial history.  I understand if someone doesn’t like her decisions or even things she says in public, but why the leap to racist slurs (albeit bafflingly confused slurs)?

National Review - Sotomayor

Ultimately, I don’t think most Americans have this hatred in them without lots of outside nudging and prodding.  It makes me wonder what would happen if the haters (not to be necessarily confused with committed) on both sides were silenced for a while and allowed people to debate again.  Maybe we’d let the best ideas (not the loudest shouters) win.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that I live in the best city (for me) in the United States – Chicago.  It has the right blend of food, music, culture, business, and attitude.  Plus, the winter weather doesn’t make me want to run screaming most of the time.  But the city I always want to go back to is London.  In addition to making dedicated trips, we make a point of stopping there any time we travel to Europe for a day or so just to enjoy and relax.

The last time I was in London was about a month ago, for a night and a day.  We found out early that our flight would be delayed leaving London for home, so we had a few more hours to spend there before getting on the Tube for Heathrow.  After stopping off in a pub near our Russell Square hotel for some food and something to drink, we headed down Tottenham Court Road (which turns into Charing Cross), down Shaftesbury, and across to Leicester Square to check out the half-price theater options.  The square has at least three such ticket brokers as well as two movie theaters and many imprints of the hands of movie stars.  We got our tickets, had another quick drink, and headed to the show.

The next morning, we were greeted by the rain.  I think part of my enjoyment in London is that although the weather isn’t good, it is better than Chicago’s (especially in winter).  After a good breakfast in the hotel, we headed out toward Oxford Street, stopping off in various Caffe Nero locations to get an espresso and warm up for the next leg.  The first location we stopped in was next to a Starbucks – the Starbucks was empty, while Nero was going strong for a Sunday morning.  We walked down Oxford, doing some window shopping, till we got to Marble Arch.  We then wandered across Hyde Park, watching some pick-up soccer as we went, over to Knightsbridge.  Lunch at Wagamama (which really should be brought to Chicago) preceded some wandering around, both on the street and in Harrod’s.  Finally, we headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags, and went to the airport.

I recognize that nothing I’ve written above is extraordinary or game-changing.  London just feels both comfortable and exciting to me, a mix of old and new.  Even though we’ve been there many times, there’s still more to check out — for us, the East End is still an unknown.  Also, I found a whole street of guitar stores just off Charing Cross in Soho.  We’ll have to check them out next time.

Normally, I don’t talk much about work — I like to keep my personal and professional worlds as separate as I reasonably can.  This past month or so, though, it’s been all professional all the time.  But unlike in recent years, my time has been spent truly building something, not just trying to keep the lights on.  This is a chance to take much of what I’ve learned over the past several years — techniques, best practices — and put it into practice for customers across industries and sizes.

• IT Service Management
• Cloud computing
• Desktop and server virtualization

George Reese of enStratus (who makes some interesting tools for cloud infrastructure management) posted a somewhat surprising position on auto-scaling resources in the cloud.  I have to admit that I’ve generally found the idea of the auto-magically expanding and contracting cloud to be very appealing, especially now that IT budgets are tightening.  I hadn’t honestly thought about the possibilities for a DDoS attack and its impact on both the cloud infrastructure and the clients’ costs as the cloud expands beyond any reasonable maximum.  Reese’s article brings this concern to light and emphasizes the importance of continuing to pursue capacity planning, even in the cloud.

As I think about it more, I agree that IT should develop a pre-defined configuration and take advantage of the auto-magic within the bounds of that configuration.  Such an approach will benefit the business by engendering confidence in IT’s capabilities for capacity management and by ultimately reducing costs for the repetitive tasks that dynamic capacity changes can provide.

I was fortunate to go to Alinea in January 2007; this was before people found out about Grant Achatz’s cancer.  He was on this week’s Top Chef and had this to say on the web site:

My health is great. I am one year out of treatment and still in remission. The past year has been an amazing learning experience for me in terms of the way taste works. It has certainly made me a better chef. I now have the most intimate knowledge of flavor, and am able to process it in a more intellectual way than before.

Grant is the most inventive chef in America right now, and (I think) stands with Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal on the world stage.  The entry fee for the Alinea experience is very high, but worth every penny.